Medicine

For all you city-dwellers out there, next time you walk by a vacant lot that’s been refurbished with green gardens and budding trees, take note of your heart rate. You might find the pleasantly green view caused a welcome moment of relaxation and lowered stress.

Yesterday, I laid a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence on a hapless—not to mention clueless—tech writer who for some reason wrote an article for the New York Times Styles section. The writer, Nick Bilton, surely deserved it. His article served up a massive pile of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about radiation from cell phones…

The New York Times Styles Section giveth. The New York Times Styles Section taketh away. Last week, The NYT Styles Section published an excellent deconstruction of the pseudoscientific activities of Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe, by Courtney Rubin. Although skeptics might think that it was a tad too “balanced” (as did I), by and…

In the first study of its kind, researchers have found that improved air quality in southern California had a direct effect on children’s respiratory health. The findings point to the effectiveness of smart public health policy — in other words, even as southern California experienced increases in traffic and commerce, aggressive air pollution policies resulted in cleaner air and healthier kids.

To put it mildly, I’m not a big fan of Vani Hari, who has achieved Internet notoriety as a highly misguided “food activist” better known as The Food Babe. As The Food Babe, Hari has improbably become a minor celebrity by attacking food companies over various ingredients their products and, unfortunately, seems poised for more.…

One of the things I miss about not being able to follow college basketball these days is that I don’t really know enough about the state of the game to understand Mark Titus’s columns at Grantland. They’re kind of sophomoric, but you know, a little of that is sometimes good, and I always enjoyed reading…

I’ve been writing a lot of posts on what I like to call the “antivaccine dogwhistle.” In politics, a “dog whistle” refers to rhetoric that sounds to the average person to be reasonable and even admirable but, like the way that a dog whistle can’t be heard by humans because the frequency of its tone…

A new study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface from a team of researchers (University of the Sunshine Coast, James Cook University, University of Queensland, Australia, and the University of Oxford) described how geckos living in humid areas manage to stay dry. The researchers used a scanning electron microscope to take a…

Naturopathy is 80% quackery, 19% science-based modalities like diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes rebranded and infused with woo, and maybe 1% valid medicine. Yes, I know I’m probably being generous given that naturopathy is based on a vitalistic, prescientific worldview and originated in the 19th century German “natural living” movement, but I’m in a generous…

How quickly things change. If there’s one thing I always feel obligated to warn my fellow pro-science advocates about vaccines and the antivaccine movement, it’s that we can never rest on our laurels or assume that the tide is turning in our direction. The reason is simple: Antivaccinationism is a powerful belief system, every bit…

Super Photo

The Mighty Philippine Eagle by VN Malazarte

In Conversation

"While the overall scene is pleasing in the fitful sunlight, some of the modern buildings are astonishingly stupid. Its like tasteless aliens have dropped giant blocks of Lego on the unsuspecting city."

#tweetscience

In Conversation II

"The authors are simply floundering about, waving their hands, admitting that ENCODE failed to meet the functional criteria of evolutionary biologists, but maybe it meets the functional criteria of some other discipline, like medicine. Yeah, that’s the ticket, they were helping doctors, or maybe veterinarians, or maybe transhumanists or bioweapons designers."

Super Photo II

Insight II

"Richard Lenski is talking about his favorite examples of evolution, and mentioned this figure from a paper on hybrid monkeyflowers. Cross-species breeding produces interesting results!"

Super Photo III

Rainforest Rocketfrog with Tadpoles by Brian Gratwicke

In Conversation III

"McDonald’s employees filed OSHA complaints against 28 McDonald’s restaurants in 19 cities, claiming the fast food giant and its franchisees are overlooking serious safety risks, such as greasy floors, minimal protective equipment and no access to basic first aid kits. Workers spoke at a news conference about their experiences, telling reporters that management had told workers to use condiments such as mustard to treat hot oil burns."

Insight III

"The crazies all come out of the woodwork, and it’s time to take on the most regularly-trotted-out, sensational and unscientific claim of all: that the LHC will create a black hole with the potential to destroy the Earth."

Insight IV

"Figure 6 from the new study shows the monthly anomalies in [California's] hydropower generation in wet and dry years, and the severe cuts over the past three years."

In Conversation IV

"Not only am I not opposed to the legalization and regulation of marijuana for recreational use, even though I’ve never tried it myself, but I support it. What I do not support are claims for medical effects that are not backed up with good scientific evidence, and for medical marijuana most claims fall into that category."